BLEAK HOUSE

Inapoi la sumar

CHAPTER V  

A Morning Adventure 

Although the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed  heavy--I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt  that they would have made midsummer sunshine dim--I was  sufficiently forewarned of the discomfort within doors at that  early hour and sufficiently curious about London to think it a good  idea on the part of Miss Jellyby when she proposed that we should  go out for a walk. 

"Ma won't be down for ever so long," she said, "and then it's a  chance if breakfast's ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.   

As to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office.  He never has  what you would call a regular breakfast.  Priscilla leaves him out  the loaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight.  Sometimes  there isn't any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it.  But I'm  afraid you must be tired, Miss Summerson, and perhaps you would  rather go to bed." 

"I am not at all tired, my dear," said I, "and would much prefer to  go out." 

"If you're sure you would," returned Miss Jellyby, "I'll get my  things on."  Ada said she would go too, and was soon astir.  I made a proposal  to Peepy, in default of being able to do anything better for him,  that he should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my  bed again. 

To this he submitted with the best grace possible,  staring at me during the whole operation as if he never had been,  and never could again be, so astonished in his life--looking very  miserable also, certainly, but making no complaint, and going  snugly to sleep as soon as it was over.  At first I was in two  minds about taking such a liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody  in the house was likely to notice it.  What with the bustle of dispatching Peepy and the bustle of getting  myself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow.  We found  Miss Jellyby trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing- room, which Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour  candlestick, throwing the candle in to make it burn better.   Everything was just as we had left it last night and was evidently  intended to remain so. 

Below-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been  taken away, but had been left ready for breakfast.  Crumbs, dust,  and waste-paper were all over the house.  Some pewter pots and a  milk-can hung on the area railings; the door stood open; and we met  the cook round the corner coming out of a public-house, wiping her  mouth. 

She mentioned, as she passed us, that she had been to see  what o'clock it was.  But before we met the cook, we met Richard, who was dancing up and  down Thavies Inn to warm his feet.  He was agreeably surprised to  see us stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk.   So he took care of Ada, and Miss Jellyby and I went first.  I may  mention that Miss Jellyby had relapsed into her sulky manner and  that I really should not have thought she liked me much unless she  had told me so. 

"Where would you wish to go?" she asked. 

"Anywhere, my dear," I replied. 

"Anywhere's nowhere," said Miss Jellyby, stopping perversely. 

"Let us go somewhere at any rate," said I.  She then walked me on very fast. 

"I don't care!" she said. 

"Now, you are my witness, Miss  Summerson, I say I don't care-but if he was to come to our house  with his great, shining, lumpy forehead night after night till he  was as old as Methuselah, I wouldn't have anything to say to him.   Such ASSES as he and Ma make of themselves!" 

"My dear!" I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the  vigorous emphasis Miss Jellyby set upon it.  "Your duty as a child--" 

"Oh!  Don't talk of duty as a child, Miss Summerson; where's Ma's  duty as a parent?  All made over to the public and Africa, I  suppose!  Then let the public and Africa show duty as a child; it's  much more their affair than mine.  You are shocked, I dare say!   Very well, so am I shocked too; so we are both shocked, and there's  an end of it!" 

She walked me on faster yet.  "But for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come,  and I won't have anything to say to him.  I can't bear him.  If  there's any stuff in the world that I hate and detest, it's the  stuff he and Ma talk.  I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our  house can have the patience to stay there and be a witness of such  inconsistencies and contradictions as all that sounding nonsense,  and Ma's management!" 

I could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young  gentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday.  I was saved the  disagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Richard and Ada  coming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to  run a race.  Thus interrupted, Miss Jellyby became silent and  walked moodily on at my side while I admired the long successions  and varieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to  and fro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy  preparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping  out of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly  groping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.  "So, cousin," said the cheerful voice of Richard to Ada behind me.   "We are never to get out of Chancery!  We have come by another way  to our place of meeting yesterday, and--by the Great Seal, here's  the old lady again!" 

Truly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and  smiling, and saying with her yesterday's air of patronage, "The  wards in Jarndyce!  Ve-ry happy, I am sure!"  "You are out early, ma'am," said I as she curtsied to me. 

"Ye-es!  I usually walk here early.  Before the court sits.  It's  retired.  I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,"  said the old lady mincingly. 

"The business of the day requires a  great deal of thought.  Chancery justice is so very difficult to  follow." 

"Who's this, Miss Summerson?" whispered Miss Jellyby, drawing my  arm tighter through her own.  The little old lady's hearing was remarkably quick.  She answered  for herself directly. 

"A suitor, my child.  At your service.  I have the honour to attend  court regularly.  With my documents.  Have I the pleasure of  addressing another of the youthful parties in Jarndyce?" said the  old lady, recovering herself, with her head on one side, from a  very low curtsy.  Richard, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,  good-naturedly explained that Miss Jellyby was not connected with  the suit. 

"Ha!" said the old lady. 

"She does not expect a judgment?  She  will still grow old.  But not so old.  Oh, dear, no!  This is the  garden of Lincoln's Inn.  I call it my garden.  It is quite a bower  in the summer-time.  Where the birds sing melodiously.  I pass the  greater part of the long vacation here.  In contemplation.  You  find the long vacation exceedingly long, don't you?"  We said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so. 

"When the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more  flowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor's  court," said the old lady, "the vacation is fulfilled and the sixth  seal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails.  Pray come and  see my lodging.  It will be a good omen for me.  Youth, and hope,  and beauty are very seldom there.  It is a long, long time since I  had a visit from either."  She had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Jellyby away,  beckoned Richard and Ada to come too.  I did not know how to excuse  myself and looked to Richard for aid.  As he was half amused and  half curious and all in doubt how to get rid of the old lady  without offence, she continued to lead us away, and he and Ada  continued to follow, our strange conductress informing us all the  time, with much smiling condescension, that she lived close by. 

It was quite true, as it soon appeared.  She lived so close by that  we had not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before  she was at home.  Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old  lady stopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of  some courts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and  said, "This is my lodging.  Pray walk up!" 

She had stopped at a shop over which was written KROOK, RAG AND  BOTTLE WAREHOUSE.  Also, in long thin letters, KROOK, DEALER IN  MARINE STORES.  In one part of the window was a picture of a red  paper mill at which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old  rags.  In another was the inscription BONES BOUGHT.  In another,  KITCHEN-STUFF BOUGHT.  In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT.  In another,  WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT.  In another, LADIES' AND GENTLEMEN'S WARDROBES  BOUGHT.  Everything seemed to be bought and nothing to be sold  there.  In all parts of the window were quantities of dirty  bottles--blacking bottles, medicine bottles, ginger-beer and soda- water bottles, pickle bottles, wine bottles, ink bottles; I am  reminded by mentioning the latter that the shop had in several  little particulars the air of being in a legal neighbourhood and of  being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and disowned relation of the  law.  There were a great many ink bottles.  There was a little  tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the door, labelled  "Law Books, all at 9d." 

Some of the inscriptions I have enumerated  were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen in Kenge and  Carboy's office and the letters I had so long received from the  firm.  Among them was one, in the same writing, having nothing to  do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a respectable  man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to execute with  neatness and dispatch: Address to Nemo, care of Mr. Krook, within.   There were several second-hand bags, blue and red, hanging up.  A  little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old crackled parchment  scrolls and discoloured and dog's-eared law-papers.  I could have  fancied that all the rusty keys, of which there must have been  hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once belonged to doors  of rooms or strong chests in lawyers' offices.  The litter of rags  tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged wooden scale,  hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might have been  counsellors' bands and gowns torn up.  One had only to fancy, as  Richard whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking in, that  yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very clean,  were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.  As it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides  by the wall of Lincoln's Inn, intercepting the light within a  couple of yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted  lantern that an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying  about in the shop.  Turning towards the door, he now caught sight  of us.  He was short, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk  sideways between his shoulders and the breath issuing in visible  smoke from his mouth as if he were on fire within.  His throat,  chin, and eyebrows were so frosted with white hairs and so gnarled  with veins and puckered skin that he looked from his breast upward  like some old root in a fall of snow. 

"Hi, hi!" said the old man, coming to the door. 

"Have you anything  to sell?" 

We naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been  trying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her  pocket, and to whom Richard now said that as we had had the  pleasure of seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being  pressed for time.  But she was not to be so easily left.  She  became so fantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties  that we would walk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was  so bent, in her harmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good  omen she desired, that I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing  for it but to comply.  I suppose we were all more or less curious;  at any rate, when the old man added his persuasions to hers and  said, "Aye, aye!  Please her!  It won't take a minute!  Come in,  come in!  Come in through the shop if t'other door's out of order!"  we all went in, stimulated by Richard's laughing encouragement and  relying on his protection. 

"My landlord, Krook," said the little old lady, condescending to  him from her lofty station as she presented him to us.  "He is  called among the neighbours the Lord Chancellor.  His shop is  called the Court of Chancery.  He is a very eccentric person.  He  is very odd.  Oh, I assure you he is very odd!" 

She shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with  her finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to  excuse him, "For he is a little--you know--M!" said the old lady  with great stateliness.  The old man overheard, and laughed. 

"It's true enough," he said, going before us with the lantern,  "that they call me the lord chancellor and call my shop Chancery.   And why do you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop  Chancery?"  "I don't know, I am sure!" said Richard rather carelessly. 

"You see," said the old man, stopping and turning round, "they--Hi!   Here's lovely hair!  I have got three sacks of ladies' hair below,  but none so beautiful and fine as this.  What colour, and what  texture!"  "That'll do, my good friend!" said Richard, strongly disapproving  of his having drawn one of Ada's tresses through his yellow hand.   

"You can admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty."  The old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my  attention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably  beautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the  little old lady herself.  But as Ada interposed and laughingly said  she could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Krook  shrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it. 

"You see, I have so many things here," he resumed, holding up the  lantern, "of so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but  THEY know nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that  that's why they have given me and my place a christening.  And I  have so many old parchmentses and papers in my stock.  And I have a  liking for rust and must and cobwebs.  And all's fish that comes to  my net.  And I can't abear to part with anything I once lay hold of  (or so my neighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter  anything, or to have any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor  repairing going on about me.  That's the way I've got the ill name  of Chancery.  I don't mind.  I go to see my noble and learned  brother pretty well every day, when he sits in the Inn.  He don't  notice me, but I notice him.  There's no great odds betwixt us.  We  both grub on in a muddle.  Hi, Lady Jane!"  A large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his  shoulder and startled us all. 

"Hi!  Show 'em how you scratch.  Hi!  Tear, my lady!" said her  master.  The cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her  tigerish claws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear. 

"She'd do as much for any one I was to set her on," said the old  man. 

"I deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers  was offered to me.  It's a very fine skin, as you may see, but I  didn't have it stripped off!  THAT warn't like Chancery practice  though, says you!"  He had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door  in the back part of it, leading to the house-entry.  As he stood  with his hand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously  observed to him before passing out, "That will do, Krook.  You mean  well, but are tiresome.  My young friends are pressed for time.  I  have none to spare myself, having to attend court very soon.  My  young friends are the wards in Jarndyce." 

"Jarndyce!" said the old man with a start. 

"Jarndyce and Jarndyce.  The great suit, Krook," returned his  lodger. 

"Hi!" exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and  with a wider stare than before.  "Think of it!" 

He seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us  that Richard said, "Why, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal  about the causes before your noble and learned brother, the other  Chancellor!" 

"Yes," said the old man abstractedly. 

"Sure!  YOUR name now will  be--" 

"Richard Carstone." 

"Carstone," he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his  forefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a  separate finger. 

"Yes.  There was the name of Barbary, and the  name of Clare, and the name of Dedlock, too, I think."

"He knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!"  said Richard, quite astonished, to Ada and me. 

"Aye!" said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction.   

"Yes!  Tom Jarndyce--you'll excuse me, being related; but he was  never known about court by any other name, and was as well known  there as--she is now," nodding slightly at his lodger. 

"Tom  Jarndyce was often in here.  He got into a restless habit of  strolling about when the cause was on, or expected, talking to the  little shopkeepers and telling 'em to keep out of Chancery,  whatever they did.  'For,' says he, 'it's being ground to bits in a  slow mill; it's being roasted at a slow fire; it's being stung to  death by single bees; it's being drowned by drops; it's going mad  by grains.'  He was as near making away with himself, just where  the young lady stands, as near could be."  We listened with horror.  "He come in at the door," said the old man, slowly pointing an  imaginary track along the shop, "on the day he did it--the whole  neighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a  certainty sooner or later--he come in at the door that day, and  walked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there,  and asked me (you'll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to  fetch him a pint of wine.  'For,' says he, 'Krook, I am much  depressed; my cause is on again, and I think I'm nearer judgment  than I ever was.'  I hadn't a mind to leave him alone; and I  persuaded him to go to the tavern over the way there, t'other side  my lane (I mean Chancery Lane); and I followed and looked in at the  window, and saw him, comfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by  the fire, and company with him.  I hadn't hardly got back here when  I heard a shot go echoing and rattling right away into the inn.  I  ran out--neighbours ran out--twenty of us cried at once, 'Tom  Jarndyce!'"  The old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the  lantern, blew the light out, and shut the lantern up. 

"We were right, I needn't tell the present hearers.  Hi!  To be  sure, how the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while  the cause was on!  How my noble and learned brother, and all the  rest of 'em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as  if they hadn't heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if  they had--Oh, dear me!--nothing at all to do with it if they had  heard of it by any chance!"  Ada's colour had entirely left her, and Richard was scarcely less  pale.  Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was  no party in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a  shock to come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended  in the minds of many people with such dreadful recollections.  I  had another uneasiness, in the application of the painful story to  the poor half-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my  surprise, she seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the  way upstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior  creature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord  was "a little M, you know!" 

She lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from  which she had a glimpse of Lincoln's Inn Hall.  This seemed to have  been her principal inducement, originally, for taking up her  residence there.  She could look at it, she said, in the night,  especially in the moonshine.  Her room was clean, but very, very  bare.  I noticed the scantiest necessaries in the way of furniture;  a few old prints from books, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered  against the wall; and some half-dozen reticles and work-bags,  "containing documents," as she informed us.  There were neither  coals nor ashes in the grate, and I saw no articles of clothing  anywhere, nor any kind of food.  Upon a shelf in an open cupboard  were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so forth, but all dry and  empty.  There was a more affecting meaning in her pinched  appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had understood  before.  "Extremely honoured, I am sure," said our poor hostess with the  greatest suavity, "by this visit from the wards in Jarndyce.  And  very much indebted for the omen.  It is a retired situation. 

 Considering.  I am limited as to situation.  In consequence of the  necessity of attending on the Chancellor.  I have lived here many  years.  I pass my days in court, my evenings and my nights here.  I  find the nights long, for I sleep but little and think much.  That  is, of course, unavoidable, being in Chancery.  I am sorry I cannot  offer chocolate.  I expect a judgment shortly and shall then place  my establishment on a superior footing.  At present, I don't mind  confessing to the wards in Jarndyce (in strict confidence) that I  sometimes find it difficult to keep up a genteel appearance.  I  have felt the cold here.  I have felt something sharper than cold.   It matters very little.  Pray excuse the introduction of such mean  topics."  She partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window  and called our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there,  some containing several birds.  There were larks, linnets, and  goldfinches--I should think at least twenty.  "I began to keep the little creatures," she said, "with an object  that the wards will readily comprehend.  With the intention of  restoring them to liberty.  When my judgment should be given.  Ye- es!  They die in prison, though. 

Their lives, poor silly things,  are so short in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by  one, the whole collection has died over and over again.  I doubt,  do you know, whether one of these, though they are all young, will  live to be free!  Very mortifying, is it not?"  Although she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect  a reply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so  when no one but herself was present.  "Indeed," she pursued, "I positively doubt sometimes, I do assure  you, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or  Great Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark  and senseless here, as I have found so many birds!"  Richard, answering what he saw in Ada's compassionate eyes, took  the opportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the  chimney-piece.  We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to  examine the birds. 

"I can't allow them to sing much," said the little old lady, "for  (you'll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea  that they are singing while I am following the arguments in court.   And my mind requires to be so very clear, you know!  Another time,  I'll tell you their names.  Not at present.  On a day of such good  omen, they shall sing as much as they like.  In honour of youth," a  smile and curtsy, "hope," a smile and curtsy, "and beauty," a smile  and curtsy. 

"There!  We'll let in the full light."  The birds began to stir and chirp. 

"I cannot admit the air freely," said the little old lady--the room  was close, and would have been the better for it--"because the cat  you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives.   She crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours.  I have  discovered," whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is  sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty.  In  consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given.  She is  sly and full of malice.  I half believe, sometimes, that she is no  cat, but the wolf of the old saying.  It is so very difficult to  keep her from the door."  Some neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was half- past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to an  end than we could easily have done for ourselves.  She hurriedly  took up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the  table on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court.  On  our answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she  opened the door to attend us downstairs. 

"With such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I  should be there before the Chancellor comes in," said she, "for he  might mention my case the first thing.  I have a presentiment that  he WILL mention it the first thing this morning" 

She stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the  whole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had  bought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a  little M.  This was on the first floor.  But she had made a  previous stoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a  dark door there. 

"The only other lodger," she now whispered in explanation, "a law- writer.  The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to  the devil.  I don't know what he can have done with the money.   Hush!" 

She appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,  and repeating "Hush!" went before us on tiptoe as though even the  sound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.  Passing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through  it on our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of  packets of waste-paper in a kind of well in the floor.  He seemed  to be working hard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead,  and had a piece of chalk by him, with which, as he put each  separate package or bundle down, he made a crooked mark on the  panelling of the wall.  Richard and Ada, and Miss Jellyby, and the little old lady had gone  by him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me,  and chalked the letter J upon the wall--in a very curious manner,  beginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward.  It  was a capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as  any clerk in Messrs. Kenge and Carboy's office would have made. 

"Can you read it?" he asked me with a keen glance. 

"Surely," said I. 

"It's very plain." 

"What is it?" 

"J."  With another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it  out and turned an "a" in its place (not a capital letter this  time), and said, "What's that?"  I told him.  He then rubbed that out and turned the letter "r," and  asked me the same question.  He went on quickly until he had formed  in the same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of  the letters, the word Jarndyce, without once leaving two letters on  the wall together. 

"What does that spell?" he asked me.  When I told him, he laughed.  In the same odd way, yet with the  same rapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the  letters forming the words Bleak House.  These, in some  astonishment, I also read; and he laughed again. 

"Hi!" said the old man, laying aside the chalk.  "I have a turn for  copying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor  write."  He looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as  if I were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite  relieved by Richard's appearing at the door and saying, "Miss  Summerson, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.   Don't be tempted.  Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Krook!" 

I lost no time in wishing Mr. Krook good morning and joining my  friends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave  us her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of  yesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada  and me.  Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked  back and saw Mr. Krook standing at his shop-door, in his  spectacles, looking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and  her tail sticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall  feather. 

"Quite an adventure for a morning in London!" said Richard with a  sigh. 

"Ah, cousin, cousin, it's a weary word this Chancery!" 

"It is to me, and has been ever since I can remember," returned  Ada. 

"I am grieved that I should be the enemy---as I suppose I am --of a great number of relations and others, and that they should be  my enemies--as I suppose they are--and that we should all be  ruining one another without knowing how or why and be in constant  doubt and discord all our lives.  It seems very strange, as there  must be right somewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has  not been able to find out through all these years where it is." 

"Ah, cousin!" said Richard. 

"Strange, indeed!  All this wasteful,  wanton chess-playing IS very strange.  To see that composed court  yesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness  of the pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache  both together.  My head ached with wondering how it happened, if  men were neither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think  they could possibly be either.  But at all events, Ada--I may call  you Ada?" 

"Of course you may, cousin Richard." 

"At all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on  US.  We have happily been brought together, thanks to our good  kinsman, and it can't divide us now!" 

"Never, I hope, cousin Richard!" said Ada gently.  Miss Jellyby gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look.   I smiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very  pleasantly.  In half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Jellyby appeared; and in  the course of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast  straggled one by one into the dining-room.  I do not doubt that  Mrs. Jellyby had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but  she presented no appearance of having changed her dress.  She was  greatly occupied during breakfast, for the morning's post brought a  heavy correspondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would  occasion her (she said) to pass a busy day.  The children tumbled  about, and notched memoranda of their accidents in their legs,  which were perfect little calendars of distress; and Peepy was lost  for an hour and a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a  policeman.  The equable manner in which Mrs. Jellyby sustained both  his absence and his restoration to the family circle surprised us  all.  She was by that time perseveringly dictating to Caddy, and Caddy  was fast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found  her.  At one o'clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart  for our luggage.  Mrs. Jellyby charged us with many remembrances to  her good friend Mr. Jarndyce; Caddy left her desk to see us depart,  kissed me in the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on  the steps; Peepy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain  of separation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to  Newgate market in search of me); and all the other children got up  behind the barouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great  concern, scattered over the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out  of its precincts.

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